The Flower Trying to Bloom in Snow
by SabaceanBabe
Summary: Once upon a time, a beautiful Selkie woman named Annie and her handsome Selkie husband, whose name was Finnick, took a break from their life beneath the sea. This did not go well. (A Hunger Games Fairytale)


Once upon a time, a beautiful Selkie woman named Annie and her handsome Selkie husband, whose name was Finnick, took a break from their life beneath the sea. One warm and sunny summer day, they shed their skins so that they could frolic on the beach. It had been months since they last played and danced on dry land, one of their favorite things to do together, and they laughed loud and long.

Late in the afternoon, the laird of the realm, Lord Snow, white of hair and icy blue of eye, was traveling from his Capitol to his mansion in the hills high above when he heard their laughter. He was intrigued by the near music of the merry sound, and so he guided his horse toward the laughter and saw the happy couple playing on the beach.

In her human form, the Selkie Annie, with her long golden-brown hair and sea-green eyes, was an enchanting sight and Snow wanted her the moment his gaze fell upon her. Spying the Selkies' shed skins, hers a rich golden-brown to match her hair, Finnick's a corresponding deep bronze, Snow recognized at once what they were.

While he watched pretty Annie play and dance with her husband, Snow motioned for the captain of his guard to attend him. He ordered the captain to bring him the "seal" skins from the beach below. "Once that task is complete," he told his captain, "take the bronze-haired lad to the Capitol and sell him to a ship setting sail for far distant lands. Bring the coin you receive for his services back to me."

His orders given, his rival removed, Snow rode down to the beach, heading straight for Annie. His white-uniformed retainers followed close behind. While his captain of the guard scooped up the Selkies' skins, Snow drew Annie up in front of him on his horse. Holding his struggling prize in his arms, he rode away as quickly as he could, heedless of her pleas and those of her husband to let her go.

After a time, Annie stopped fighting, but she still cried for her husband and for herself. After yet more time, Snow and his guards slowed their pace. The sun was low in the sky when they passed through a rose-covered gate and into the courtyard of Lord Snow's mansion. Handing the skins to his squire, Snow bade him take them to his private chambers while Snow himself carried Annie into the mansion and up to the highest tower, and there he locked her in.

Snow kept her locked in her tower room and he visited her every day. During each visit, he told her he loved her and that he wanted to marry her. Annie, in turn, told him that she already had a husband and that she loved her husband very much. She pleaded with him to let her go, but her pleas fell on deaf ears.

Annie longed for her home and she longed for her Finnick. Every day, as soon as Snow left, she went to the west-facing window of her tower room and looked out upon the sea. It was close enough to smell the scent of home, but too far away to touch. Every day, as she looked out that window, Annie wept for all that she had lost.

She wished for a way to escape her tower prison and to retrieve her skin, locked away with Finnick's in Lord Snow's room just as she was in her tower. Snow carried with him the silver key to the lock on her door; without that key, her only way out was to throw herself to the stones below. Freedom for her was now no more than a dream, but Annie wanted to live.

And so the days passed into weeks and every day was the same. Snow told her he loved her and wanted to marry her, that he would shower her and their children with riches and that they would want for nothing. To prove his words, Snow showered Annie with all the physical comforts: beautiful clothes, sparkling jewels and luminous pearls, thick feather beds and soft quilts. An old woman named Mags brought her water and wine and the finest foods twice each day; Mags never spoke, but she smiled often and her eyes were kind.

Every day Annie ate the delicious food Mags brought, but one morning, after she ate, she became sick and the old woman made her lie down until it passed. That evening, Annie was fine, but the next morning, she ate and became ill once more. It happened that way again and again, sick in the morning, fine by the evening. After four days of this, when Snow came to visit her and told her once more that he would shower their children with riches and that they would want for nothing, to protect the child she knew grew inside her, Annie said that she would marry him.

Their wedding was a lavish affair and everyone in the Capitol came to celebrate and to see the laird's mysterious and beautiful wife. Although outwardly Annie was calm, inside she longed for her true husband and for the sea. Surrounded by strangers, she floated through her wedding day sustained by memories of home and of Finnick; she often laughed at things none of those strangers could hear or see and the people of the Capitol called her fey.

Once married, Snow no longer kept Annie locked in her tower; she could come and go as she pleased. But she could not leave his mansion and she could not enter his private chambers. Just as before he had carried the silver key to her tower with him, once she was his wife, he carried the golden key to his private chambers.

The weeks passed into months. Every night Snow visited Annie in her tower room. Every day, Annie looked out over the sea, longing to return to her stolen life, but she stopped asking Snow to let her go. She watched the boats come and go in the distance as fishermen and traders brought their goods to the Capitol, and every day, she wondered where her Finnick was and if he was well. She wondered if he missed her or if he had married a human woman, for without their skins, she and Finnick both remained trapped in these landlocked bodies.

On a cold and gray winter's day, six months after she and Snow wed, Annie gave birth to a son. An outer skin, a soft bronze in color, covered the boy at his birth. Frightened by the strangeness of it, the midwife quickly removed the skin and gave it to Snow. He took the skin from the midwife and watched Annie as he gave her a single white rose; the scent of that rose drowned out the scent of the sea, both a promise and a warning. Snow left Annie in her tower room with her son and took the boy's bronze-colored skin with him when he departed.

The months passed into years and still every day Annie watched the sea from her high tower, and although she still longed for her home, she no longer wept. She told her son tales of mermaids and mermen, of great forests of seaweed and beautiful anemones and jewel-colored fish. She told him tales of her own people and she told him of a man with bronze hair and eyes as green her own, as green as her son's.

But as the boy grew, so also did Snow's influence grow. He taught the boy the things of human kind, of politics and of human history. The boy drew away from his mother and her tales of the sea as he learned more and more the ways of those who lived always on dry land. With each day that passed, Annie's fear that she would lose her son as she had lost his father grew.

Five years after Snow took her from the sea, more than four years after her son took his first breath, Annie gave Snow a daughter, high up in her tower room. The little girl had green eyes and golden-brown hair, just like her mother; there was nothing of Snow in her, but she had no outer skin. As she grew, though still a babe, Annie told her daughter the tales of the sea that her son knew so well, and she wondered what was to become of her little girl, child both of sea and land, Selkie and human.

One day, Annie was high up in her tower, watching the sea with her daughter, when a ship sailed into the Capitol's harbor far below. It was larger than all the others, with sails that looked like birds' wings and Annie wished – oh, how she wished! – that it could take her back to her home. She had long since given up hope that she would see her Finnick again, but if she could but reach it, even without the golden-brown skin that Snow kept locked away, Annie would let it take her far out to sea where she would dive beneath the waves, one last fleeting taste of home.

Her son's laughter rose up from below, drawing Annie to the east-facing window. Looking down into the courtyard, she held her little girl and watched her little boy as he played with the old woman who used to bring her food, Mags of the ready smile and kind eyes. Annie smiled herself to hear her boy laugh so freely and she turned to take her daughter down to play with her brother. The one bright spot in Annie's existence was her children.

When she turned from the window, a glint of gold caught her eye. There, near her bed, lying on the old sealskin rug that once belonged to Snow's father, lay a key. Annie's heart leapt, for it was the key to Snow's private chambers, the place where he kept her skin and that of her true husband and her son. Holding her daughter tightly to her chest, Annie picked up the key and hurried from the room.

When Annie reached Snow's door, she found it ajar. Peeking inside, she saw three seal skins, two large and one small, hanging upon the wall behind Snow's mahogany desk. Snow was there, and so Annie turned away, but she kept hold of the key. She would wait until he left and then return once more for the skins that were rightfully hers. Once she had the skins, she would take her children and—

A voice from inside Snow's chambers stopped her and Annie whirled, her hold tightening on her daughter. Heedless of the consequences, she returned to Snow's chambers. She pushed open the door and saw her Finnick standing there, a sword in his hand. The hilt of it was a golden trident and the long middle tine of it extended into a silvery blade that was but an inch from Snow's throat.

"Annie, my love, my wife, it took me many years to win my freedom and to find you," Finnick said, "and I have come to take you home." His eyes never left Snow's. "You cannot stop us, Lord Snow," he continued. "If you try, my ship's cannons will destroy this mansion and you with it." With that, moving swiftly, Finnick brought the trident-shaped hilt of his sword down hard on Snow's head. Snow fell to the floor, unconscious, and Finnick turned toward Annie, his eyes widening as his gaze fell on the baby in her arms.

As Finnick stood there stunned, Annie quickly tore all three skins from the wall and tossed them to her true husband. Waking from his near stupor, Finnick sheathed his sword. He gathered up the skins and took Annie's hand, but when he started toward the front door, Annie led him to the courtyard instead. She couldn't leave Snow's mansion without her son and when Finnick saw the little boy who tossed a ball with old Mags, understanding dawned.

"But there is only one small skin," Finnick said. He looked from the small bronze skin to the bronze-haired boy, his gaze finally falling on the brown-haired little girl in Annie's arms and Annie choked back a sob.

"My son is yours and of the sea," she said to her Finnick, "and my daughter is Snow's and of the land." Tears gathered in her eyes. "They are both mine, but she has no skin and I cannot take her with me." Her tears fell as her heart broke and her daughter began to cry.

"Leave her with me, child," old Mags said, the first words she had ever spoken, as far as Annie knew. Something about the old woman's voice, the cadence of her words, reminded Annie of home and she frowned.

"There is a sealskin rug in my tower room," Annie began and the old woman smiled.

"It is mine, child. I was like you, once. But unlike you, I bore no children, either in the sea or on land." She came closer to Annie and her daughter and held out her arms. "I will keep her safe and you may visit her whenever you can."

"But your skin…"

Mags shook her head. "I have lived as a human too long. But I will love and care for this child as if she were my own."

Filled with reluctance and hope, and knowing the time was short if they were to escape, Annie gave her daughter into Mags' arms even as they heard Snow shout for his guards to attend him. The old woman who had been so kind to her and to her son would see to it that her daughter knew what she was and where she came from.

"Annie, we must go," Finnick said, his tone urgent. He took Annie's hand in his once more, holding it so tightly she thought he would never let go, and Annie took their son's hand in her other. But then Finnick turned to Mags and said, "Come with us, old woman. My ship will bear you and the girl to someplace safe." And together, all five ran from the courtyard to where a dark-haired, gray-eyed man and a small, spiky-haired woman waited with horses to take them back to Finnick's ship.


End file.
